The Most Effective Ways to Smooth Your Rug
Decorative rugs and rugs are a great way to add color, texture, and warmth to a room. Whether you’re buying one from a store or online, or retrieving one you’ve been storing in your basement, attic, or closet, there’s a good chance it will roll. This makes sense, of course, when transporting and storing carpets, but can also cause them to wrinkle, dent, and/or curl around the edges.
Luckily, your carpet won’t stay that way forever. Here are some ways to smooth it out.
How to straighten a carpet
Instead of unrolling the carpet and waiting for it to straighten out, here’s how you can speed up the process:
Reverse throw
Before trying anything else, start by rolling the carpet in the opposite direction . In other words, if it was rolled inward, roll it outward instead, applying pressure as you go. This will force the twisted and wrinkled fibers to settle in a new direction and eventually straighten out. Sometimes that’s all you need to do. In other cases, you may need to move on to one of the methods below.
Keep it in reverse
If rolling the carpet in the opposite direction does not help immediately, roll it in the same way (in reverse order) and tie . Depending on how deep the folds are, this may take a few hours or a few days.
Weigh the corners
If your main concern is that the corners of your carpet are rolling up, place heavy objects at each corner . Instead of using chairs or sofa corners, which are likely to leave indentations where the legs should be placed, opt for flat and wide items such as heavy books.
Put it in the sun
While heat causes the carpet fibers to relax, it can also melt or burn polypropylene, nylon, or other synthetic materials. One way to take advantage of the warmth without the risk of damaging the carpet is to lay it outside on a warm, dry day in direct or partial sun on a clean area of concrete or asphalt. Under the right conditions, your carpet can flatten out within hours.
Use a hair dryer
You can also use a hair dryer to gently heat the carpet to loosen up the fibers. To avoid burning or melting the carpet, run the hair dryer across the carpet in sweeping motions from at least 5 to 10 inches away using low to medium heat.